U.S.

Department of Justice

Bridget M. Rohde
Acting United States Attorney
Eastern District of New York
271 Cadman Plaza East
Brooklyn, New York 11201

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 31, 2017

Contact:
John Marzulli
Tyler Daniels
United States Attorneys Office
(718) 254-6323

PRESS RELEASE

FORMER SOCCER OFFICIAL COSTAS TAKKAS SENTENCED TO

15 MONTHS IN PRISON FOR LAUNDERING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN BRIBES

Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, former Cayman Islands soccer official
Costas Takkas was sentenced to 15 months of incarceration by United States District Judge
Pamela K. Chen following his money laundering conspiracy guilty plea on May 24, 2017.
Takkas was convicted of this offense in connection with his agreement to launder $3 million in
bribes to be paid by sports marketing companies to Jeffrey Webb, the former president of
CONCACAF, $2 million of which reached Webb through Takkas. Takkas was also ordered to
pay $3 million in restitution to the Caribbean Football Union, known as CFU, as part of his
sentence.

Bridget M. Rohde, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New
York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation,
New York Field Office (FBI), and R. Damon Rowe, Special Agent-in-Charge, Internal Revenue
Service Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office (IRS-CI) announced the sentence.

The defendant Costas Takkas has now been held to account for using the U.S.
financial system to launder millions of dollars in bribes as part of the corruption of international
soccer, stated Acting United States Attorney Rohde. This Office, together with our law
enforcement partners at the FBI and IRS-CI, will continue to bring to justice those who seek to
use the U.S. financial system to hide criminal conduct and its proceeds. Ms. Rohde also
thanked the United States Department of Justice Office of International Affairs, Organized
Crime and Gang Section and Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section for their assistance
in the case, and expressed her appreciation to the governments of the Cayman Islands,
Switzerland, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines for their cooperation.

The soccer officials involved in all aspects of FIFA take an oath to adhere to a
code of ethics, and they accept a responsibility to make sure monies go to the groups they
represent, not to line their own pockets, stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney.
The game of soccer will continue to be played in small neighborhood parks and in lavish
stadiums around the world, but the FBIs wide-ranging and vast investigation wont end until
everyone involved in every aspect of corruption and bribery are brought to justice.

Over a three-year period, Takkas undermined the process of fair and open
competition when he conspired to secretly funnel bribe money to Webb through a series of
transactions involving international wire transfers and U.S. financial institutions, stated IRS-CI
Special Agent-in-Charge Rowe. IRS Criminal Investigation is committed to aggressively
investigating individuals who use offshore entities, foreign bank accounts, and wire transfer
systems based in the U.S. to facilitate the laundering of illicit funds. Working with our partners
at the Department of Justice, we will continue to unmask money laundering intermediaries who
enable corrupt practices to flourish.
Background 1

The sport of soccer is governed worldwide by the Fderation Internationale de

Football Association (FIFA), FIFAs constituent continental confederations (including
CONCACAF, the confederation covering North America, Central America and the Caribbean),
and FIFAs constituent national member associations (which are also known as federations).
Some confederations, such as CONCACAF, include regional football subgroups within them,
including the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), which is composed of federations from the
Caribbean region. Since 2004, soccer officials have been bound by FIFAs code of ethics,
which, among other things, imposes a fiduciary duty on soccer officials in favor of the soccer
organizations they represent.
The CFU member federations owned the media and marketing rights to soccer
matches played in their home territories during the qualifying stages for the mens World Cup
tournament. Rather than sell portions of these rights separately as individual federations, the
CFU federations agreed to bundle portions of their rights together for sale. The CFU, like many
other soccer governing bodies, typically sold these rights to sports marketing companies that
served as middlemen, which in turn sold different portions of the rights to different broadcasters
and media companies around the world.
The CFU Rights Bribery and Laundering Scheme

The defendant was a longtime associate of Jeffrey Webb, who in 2012 was the
president of the Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA, which was a member of the CFU),
a high-ranking official of the CFU, and the president of CONCACAF. Around that time, an
executive of Traffic USA, a sports marketing company based in Miami, began negotiations with
Webb to purchase the bundled media and marketing rights to the CFU federations World Cup
qualifier matches for the 2018 and 2022 cycles. The defendant communicated on Webbs behalf
to the Traffic executive that Webb wanted a $3 million bribe in exchange for awarding these
rights to Traffic. The Traffic executive agreed, and a few months later, after Webb had
appointed the Traffic executive to serve as secretary general of CONCACAF, Traffic and the
CFU entered into a contract for the sale of these rights. Meanwhile, the defendant began to work

1
The information described below is set forth in various court filings and statements
made during court appearances in this case and related cases.

2
with the Traffic executive to determine how Traffic could pay Webb this bribe while disguising
the true nature of the payments.

The defendant had meetings with other Traffic executives both in Miami and in
Brazil, where Traffics parent company was located, to make arrangements for Traffic to secretly
make these bribe payments to Webb. Following these meetings, in November 2012, Traffic
wired $1.2 million from a bank account in Florida to a middlemans bank account in Hong Kong,
from which $1 million of these funds were wired to an account in the Cayman Islands owned by
Kosson Ventures, Limited, a company the defendant controlled. In December 2012, Traffic
wired an additional $500,000 to the Caymanian bank account of CPL Limited, another company
the defendant controlled. In the course of receiving these funds, the defendant made false
statements about them, and the accounts receiving them, to Caymanian bank employees. The
defendant also created bogus consulting contracts purportedly to justify the payments.

After receiving these funds in the Caymanian accounts, the defendant conveyed
them to Webb and the Traffic executive, or spent the funds for their benefit. For example, after
wiring some of the funds to a Citibank account he held in Florida in his own name, Takkas used
funds in that account to pay for real estate in Georgia that Webb was purchasing, and for a
swimming pool at Webbs house in Georgia. During the course of the scheme, the defendant
lied to a Citibank employee about the payment for the swimming pool, saying that the swimming
pool was a wedding gift for Webb. Takkas also used these funds to pay for luxury leather goods
and watches for Webb and the Traffic executive, and a kitchen remodeling and expensive
painting for the Traffic executive.

Also in 2012, Traffic entered an agreement with another Miami-based sports

marketing company named Media World, whereby the two companies pooled the media and
marketing rights they had obtained for World Cup qualifier matches in the CONCACAF region,
and shared responsibility for associated costs. As part of that agreement, Media World agreed to
be responsible for half of the $3 million bribe that Traffic had agreed to pay Webb for the CFU
media rights. The defendant met with a Media World executive in Miami on several occasions
to discuss how Media World could pay this bribe in a hidden manner. Eventually, the defendant
and Media World arranged for $500,000 to be sent from a Panamanian front company to various
accounts in the United States, the Cayman Islands, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, again
using bogus consulting contracts to mask the true nature of the bribe payments. The defendant
spent some of these funds to benefit Webb before the scheme was stopped, first by concerns
about the governments investigation and then by the disclosure of the scheme in May 2015 by
the initial indictment in this case.

The governments case is being handled by the Offices FIFA Task Force.
Assistant United States Attorneys Paul Tuchmann, Samuel P. Nitze, M. Kristin Mace, Keith D.
Edelman, Kaitlin T. Farrell, and Brian D. Morris are in charge of the prosecution.

The Defendant:

COSTAS TAKKAS
Age: 60
Citizenship: United Kingdom

E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 15-CR-252 (PKC)